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Lisa Witsken's life changed in the time it took to stroll to a vending machine for a can of Sprite. She returned to the laboratory waiting room to find her 2 1/2-week-old daughter alone in the stroller; her husband, Todd, had vanished into the bowels of the doctors' offices.

Todd returned momentarily, looking flushed and upset. Heart pounding, Witsken followed him outside to a bench and listened to his stammering words that a CAT scan had revealed a mass on his brain.

"I didn't know what a brain tumor was for the life of me," Witsken recalls. "It wasn't anything that concerned us, so I assured him we'd take care of it. Doctors could fix anything — up until then, that is."

But doctors couldn't fix Todd's brain tumor, despite surgery to remove the tumor and experimental radiation therapy to counteract the fast-growing cancer. That day, Witsken began her personal journey from a professional tennis player's wife to a widow — at age 32.

Doctors originally gave Todd a mere three to six months to live, but he held on for nearly two years after the diagnosis. Yet the Witskens didn't

get the one big miracle they wanted. On May 25, 1998, tortured by a pain she could no longer bear to watch, Lisa linked hands with family members around Todd's hospital bed set up in their Zionsville living room and begged God to take her husband.

Her last words to Todd were brave: "‘You need to let go. Don't worry about us — we'll be fine." Deep in her heart, though, Witsken harbored doubts as to how she would physically and mentally accomplish her end of the bargain. Now a year later, she's only partway through her journey of healing.

Weathering the Storm

Unfortunately, Witsken shares similar circumstances with more women than society generally realizes. Today, the average age of widowhood is a young 55 years, says Ellen McGirt, a national financial writer who concentrates on women and financial literacy. As many as 83 percent of the women who subscribe to the WHAT GROUP WidowNet are under age 60, and 16 percent are age 30 to 39.

Such figures seem almost unreal, even to the widows themselves. In Witsken's case, she spent so much energy focusing on positive outcomes to each treatment that she never envisioned this possible ending. Her reaction strikes a common chord among a sisterhood of women who also found themselves widowed before their time.

"How stupid could I be? I really didn't think Bill would die and leave me," says Dawn M. Kendrick, whose husband, a proctologist, chairman of the board and chief of staff at Kendrick Memorial Hospital, was 40 years older than she. After a six-month whirlwind courtship at age 19 that ended in a Las Vegas chapel wedding, Kendrick stayed happily married to Bill for more than 16 years. So despite the fact that her 76-year-old husband had suffered two heart attacks and also battled cancer of the bladder within a year's span, she held his hand as he was wheeled into surgery after a third heart attack and assured him that everything would be okay.

Bill died in intensive care that February evening in 1993. "I've always felt bad about that," Kendrick says. "I let him die after I promised the opposite."

Such is the beginning of a whirlwind of emotions widows routinely face. Although no two people experience the mourning process in exactly the same way, experts say guilt usually marks one of the first turns on the roller coaster of grief. As Witsken points out, it was only too easy to internalize blame for Todd's illness early after his death. "My faith wasn't quite as strong that day as it ended up through this ordeal," she says. "So I assumed I must have done something terrible in my life for this punishment."

Such a profound loss can trigger other strong reactions as well, says the Rev. James Gaynor, a chaplain at Community Hospital North and a private practice counselor specializing in grief and loss. Shock is usually the initial stage of grief, the beginning of an emotional denial that such a thing could happen, he says. Sadness, depression, emptiness, anger and even hallucinations are perfectly normal grieving reactions to follow — and these stages are neither exclusive nor chronological. "Grief happens only because of love," Gaynor says. "If there isn't caring, there is no loss. So people should give into grief instead of avoiding it."

Kendrick's first months on her own were riddled with illogical thoughts that Bill had arrived home with news of a terrible mix-up at the hospital each time she heard a door shut. The nights, with their dreams of her husband by her side, bothered her still more. "I'd wake up and have to mourn fresh because he died all over again," she says. Without the dreams, however, she physically ached, crying in the dark for him to come home. "Just getting out of bed in those days was an accomplishment." She and their teenage daughter, Kasey, moved three times in the next six years — the first relocation in a blatant attempt to avoid driving by Bill's hospital. "You make very poor decisions, particularly that first year when you're not thinking clearly," she says. "Whatever Kasey wanted, I'd go to the end of the earth to get, just to make some of the pain go away."

Happy couples also sparked a well-hidden jealousy. "Not that you want anything bad to happen to your friends," she explains. "It's just acute loneliness rearing its head." Kendrick's emotional ride dragged out five years before she knew she'd successfully survived. Again, that's a normal time frame, Gaynor assures, despite society's pressures to avoid discussing the death of a spouse.

"As if I could forget," says Harriet Campbell, 47, whose husband, Craig, died suddenly just seven months ago. Although the Campbells had discussed what might happen if either died, they had never followed the conversations with action plans. "Like any seemingly healthy man his age, he thought it would never happen to him," she says. So Craig continued to use his legal background to operate Old Hickory Furniture Co. with his partners, while she tutored children with learning difficulties at St. Rita School and later Park Tudor School.

On Nov. 9, 1998, Campbell's worst nightmare descended: The man she calls the love of her life for 22 years, her best friend and the family breadwinner died of a massive heart attack in the middle of the night. Daughters Dana, 13, and Tory, 10, spoke at their dad's funeral; their mom sat calmly listening while friends and family dissolved into puddles. "I have to be a role model for my children so they know that not only can we survive something like this, but that we can have quite a successful, wonderful life," Campbell says.

Tough Questions

In a similar manner, Witsken draws her strength from her four children — Tyler, 7; Conner, 5; Tanner, 4; and Carlie, 2 — as living reminders of Todd's legacy. Although the family honors Todd's memory, the quintet has started new traditions: Good behavior earns a child the right to choose the family's weekend activity treat, whether a walk in the park or pizza at Chuck E. Cheese's, for instance.

For Witsken, these breaks bring a second blessing: They fill the Saturday and Sunday hours when her bereavement feels freshest. "Todd was their playmate, the biggest kid of the bunch," she says. "He always thought up games, climbed trees, built campfires. That's what they miss — it's not quite the same with just Mom."

But her brood's childlike faith offers the sweetest salve. "Kids are so comfortable with heaven," she says. "I'm sure Todd laughs at night when they say their prayers because they pray to God, Jesus, Mother Mary and Daddy. He's right up there with the top ones." Meanwhile, Witsken prepares for the day they ask the harder questions she already has pondered: "Why didn't God let Todd stay, since he had only positive, faith-filled things to pass to his children?"

She consoles herself with the words of comfort she receives from her Carmel church. "I have to remember that heaven is a wonderful place," she says. "That's eternity — this is a short path we walk to be where he is. We miss him, but since there's no time there, we'll be with him in a second." Following counselors' recommendations, Witsken also allows the children to see her cry. They instinctively cuddle to her and offer tissues to blow her nose, announcing matter-of-factly, "You miss Daddy very much today."

Campbell, too, finds herself leaning heavily on her religious family during this first year of widowhood. A week after Craig's funeral, she received what she labels a divine gift: an inner light that brings her peace and strength to handle emergencies such as Tory's broken arm, ordinary frustrations such as missing batteries on Christmas and awkward moments when friends seem upset by their inability to erase her pain. "Honestly, I believe it's the thoughts and prayers of many people," she says. "But I do wonder why this sensation happened to me and not to other women who also struggle."

Campbell, unlike Kendrick, also finds comfort in imitating her life as a wife — sleeping in her own bed, reporting to Park Tudor, greeting her puppy at the door. "Even though emotions whirl around you, an everyday routine provides a sense of normalcy," Campbell notes. "Of course, something is terribly wrong because there's a huge hole in the fabric where my husband was. But at least a familiar life — people going to work, having babies, keeping vet appointments — goes on around me." However, applying "widow" to her status shocks 47-year-old Campbell — she hardly fits the stereotype of a gray-haired lady content to rock by the fire.

Kendrick can relate. Widowed at age 36, she immediately encountered Anna Nicole Smith assumptions even among her closer friends. One asked within two weeks of Bill's death if she had picked out a replacement. "I almost came across the table at him," she recalls. Such thoughtless comments still occasionally roll her way. This year, a colleague remarked of her continuing grief, "You must have loved your husband after all."

"I might have been angrier if I hadn't been so surprised," she adds. "As it was, I bit my tongue to keep from blurting out, ‘Yeah, I thought I'd die the pain was so bad. What else do you want to know?'"

The Power of Memories

Dating brings its own separate set of challenges. Kendrick acknowledges that she enjoys the commitment of marriage and would like to be a wife again — someday. But until then, she grapples to avoid idealizing her marriage, placing her first husband on a pedestal with whom no one else can compete. "One nice human trait is that you don't remember bad things," she says. "But that's dangerous when it affects your current situation."

Dr. Jamia Jasper Jacobsen, a therapist at Helix Health Centers, agrees. "Part of becoming a total person again is dealing with the fact that all memories aren't so wonderful," she says. However, Jacobsen says memories are among the positive tools counselors work with because they are part of the legacy the deceased leaves behind.

Kendrick counts Bill's coats — a navy blue cashmere and a brown jacket she still wears each winter — and a slew of hats his patients knitted for him among her physical treasures. Early on, she'd go into the bedroom closet, hold his shirts to her face and breathe. "The worst moments were when his clothes stopped smelling like him," she says. "I'd give anything in the world to figure out how to prevent that from happening."

Witsken, on the other hand, rejoices that she can now recall the laughing moments; throughout last summer, she could see only Todd's pain-wracked body propped in wheelchairs and beds. But by the time she edited home movies and photos together for a presentation at a fund-raising dinner for the Todd Witsken Tennis Center on March 12, memories of Todd swinging his sons high so they could stuff basketballs through a net, of her husband's excitement at a whitewater rafting/fishing trip, and of his confidence in life after death took center stage.

"There were a lot of wet eyes in the room," she says. Witsken, however, glowed with happiness. She keeps her copy of the videotape near the family room television set to pop in at a moment's notice. Ultimately, it reflects her own positive bent. "I consider each sunrise a bright new day, not that my world is gloomy," she says. "Todd dealt courageously with his situation, and I saw firsthand how that attitude rubbed off on everyone else."

She also holds tight to the inner strength she says she has cultivated since his death. "I'm a fighter, and now I'm very realistic, just like Todd was," she says. "I'm not afraid to take hold of what I must and move forward. I've been given a lot of gifts in my life — I still consider myself a truly lucky person for knowing Todd — and at the end of each day, when my head hits the pillow, I realize it's getting easier to cope."

This chance to discover personal strength is perhaps the greatest parting gift a person gives loved ones at death. According to Jacobsen, while the grieving process is painful, through it women achieve new life-affirming roles. "Out of loss comes a sense of finding yourself," she says. "You discover you're a very neat person."

On that track, Kendrick took up a new career as a Realtor with F.C. Tucker and adopted Kasey, a young boy from Paraguay. "He dragged us kicking and screaming out of mourning," she says. "But most of all, Bill is there on those days when I get scared that maybe we only get one shot at happiness and that I've already had mine. Although he certainly didn't think I was perfect, this man loved me. So now it's as if I have this person behind me rooting for me, and I can't let him down."

That's actually the final stage of grief, says Gaynor, when hope begins to peek through and the widow assimilates the loss into her life. "You shift from what cannot be to what can be in your life," he says. "Now you internalize the loved one in your heart and life so that as long as your life goes on, so does the deceased's life through you."

As for Campbell, an anonymous Christmas deed she attributes to her late husband's tender care keeps her spirits buoyed. Stymied by a flat tire on Dec. 25, she left the car in the driveway and hitched a ride with her mother to the family dinner table. Upon returning that evening, she discovered a full tire and bags of Beanie Babies hanging on the front door knob. "That someone would do something so selfless for another family...I will hold it in my heart forever," she says. Such caring helps trivialize her own search for a full-time job to cover household expenses and school tuition for her girls.

"Most women look at death and say, ‘How could I live without him?' From my perspective, you simply say, ‘I can.'"

 

SIDEBAR: A Helping Hand

Dawn Kendrick lost touch with a few friends when her husband died in 1993, mainly because they didn't know what to say. "You want to fix it and it can't be fixed," she says. "But the old ‘I might say the wrong thing' excuse is copping out."

Kendrick and other widows offer several ways you can help a friend when tragedy strikes:

* Attend the funeral, calling, or wake. Sharing stories about the deceased is a relief to grieving family members. In fact, Harriet Campbell didn't mind a 4 1/2-hour calling at all. "Far from being cruel on the spouse, this is your opportunity to feed her your love and attention," Campbell explains. "It lifts up the soul."

* Fix a meal. During the first month on her own, Kendrick could barely get to the end of the day. Her neighbors' delivery of hot meals became a lifesaver to her sanity and her teenager's nutrition.

Be sure to date your offerings, though: Campbell didn't have the energy to inventory the entrees prepared for her and thus had no clue whether food in her refrigerator over the next few weeks was still edible.

* Offer financial assistance, if possible. Although Kendrick didn't accept, her friend's offer to loan cash to tide over the family until the estate was settled touched the widow deeply. The invitation also opened up a subject Kendrick says she would have found nearly impossible to broach, even if she had needed the infusion.

* Help her set realistic goals that invite human interaction. Among the suggestions: Help her host friends in the house for a few hours a week, or take her to church, parties and picnics with you.

* Organize an angel network. Parents of Park Tudor students, where Campbell's daughters attend school, formed a network that even three months after the funeral took turns showering the Campbells with cards, flowers, small gifts and invitations to dinner or movies. Each family in the program took a different week.

Such frequent contact needs to continue long after the widow shows outward, public signs of normalcy.

* Don't make decisions for your friend. If necessary, encourage bankers or other legal authorities not to talk with you about arrangements as if the widow weren't in the room with you.

* Don't ignore danger signs. Widows who withdraw from life or who continue copious crying after a prolonged period of time should raise red flags. Also look for patterns: Is she drinking more or taking more over-the-counter medications? Does she often make statements like, "I have nothing to live for"? In these cases, don't hesitate to get your friend into counseling.